316 CHAPTER 6. LANGUAGE PATTERNS
6.4.2 Indirect speech
One of the important things in using Japanese is to be indirect whenever
possible in formal situations. This entails asking indirect questions instead
of direct questions, making indirect suggestions instead of telling people
what they should do according to you, and stating assumptions rather than
stating truths, even if they are truths. This section will explain how to turn
direct speech into indirect speech, and for which constructions this is easily
done.
Expressing hearsay
One way to state something indirectly is by making explicit the fact that
you only heard or read something somewhere, rather than being some-
thing you yourself believe or know. As mentioned in the section on com-
parison and likeness, this is done using the noun adjective , in combi-
nation with a clause in , to form a hear-say construction. Compare
the following two statements:
”That popular group will disband.””I hear that popular group will disband.”While the first sentence implies that the speaker is certain of the
stated fact, the second sentence states the information more carefully, stat-
ing that it seems the case that something is a fact, based on having heard
or read it somewhere. This indirect form of stating something can only be
done for second hand information, and should never be used to soften a
statement that isn’t actually hearsay.
Negative questions
Asking a negative question is, in many languages, a way to politely ask
someone to do something. For instance, ”won’t you join us for dinner” is
an English phrase that has as implied meaning ”please join us for dinner”,
rather than the literal ”you will not be joining us for dinner, will you?”.